How long does the 1 Litre of Resin last?

[Drewu]

Current slicing software ("slicing" = turning into layers and paths) offers a variety of infill options, including totally hollow.
linear_2pc_25pc_50pc_with_scale.jpg
Image by RitchRap

[Marcus]

Yes, I am aware of that. But similar to printing at Shapeways (or similar companies) you'll have to manually make it hollow to alow trappped resin to flow out of it- or as suggested drill a hole later.
Also printing hollow won't cut it all the time, as for complex models some parts need to be more rigid then others.

[nka]

We could make wraffles with those

[Lochemage]

Yes ;-) But the point was most things on thingiverse and other sites are designed as solid models, hollowing out can sace material cost :-)

Since we won't be using any slicing software, and everything will be done directly in Blender, there is a built in modifier you can use to hollow out any manifold object. It's called Solidify. You can configure exactly how thick you want the walls to be, along with other options.

It won't be too difficult to just take any Thingiverse object and make it hollow, you just have to make sure the model is manifold (e.g. closed with no holes or floating parts) and that can be done using ctrl+alt+shift+M in blender to auto-manifold things.

[Marcus]

Well, Blender acts as a Slicer in this case ;-)
Thanks for the heads up about Solidify! Sounds great.
It has been a while since I last tinkered with Blender.
The thing about Thingiverse objects, including mine, is the sloppy 3d modeling. I got a bit careless to make an object a day, and my UP prints almost anything, even if the STL file has flaws.
But of course there's software to fix these models. I have to check the auto-manifold option in Blender... Usualy those functions have limits with sloppy models.

[Lochemage]

Another way to fix models up, that I've found, is to use the Decimate modifier in blender, basically it destroys all of your current geometry and generates a more uniformed geometry that fits the whole object with minimal changes to the overall outline. Once you do this, you may need to use Triangulate to convert N-gons back into triangles for STL use.